It was suddenly very cold, our breath steaming thickly on the air before us. My bare face and hands smarted from the sudden exposure, and I peered out the side of the cab, looking for familiar details. We were actually on the alien world this time, with its pink sky and three fiercely shining suns. The snowy wastes stretched away as far as I could see in every direction. Thin twists of mist turned this way and that on the freezing air.
“You bring me to the nicest places, Eddie,” said Molly, beating her frozen hands together and blowing on them.
“Hey, this is a whole new alien world!” I said.
“You couldn’t have picked a warmer one?”
“Well, we’re in the right place,” I said.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I recognise the bodies,” I said.
They were just as I remembered them, dozens of dead men and women, scattered across the bloodstained snow.
“Giles Deathstalker’s work,” I said. “He’s a hell of a fighter.”
“Could be a hell of a mass murderer, for all you know,” said Molly. “Where is he, anyway?”
I looked around, but there was no sign of the future warrior. I had to wonder just how accurate Ivor and Merlin’s Glass could hope to be. We’d come a long way, and just a few day’s difference after…who knew how many centuries, was only to be expected. A lot could happen to a man on the run in just a few days, most of it bad. But…Ivor and the Glass were all I had, so I was in no position to complain. Molly and I climbed down from the cab and strode out across the blindingly white plain, our feet sinking deep into the thick snow with every step. It was bitterly cold, almost unbearable, away from the protection of Ivor’s cab, but the sheer effort involved in forcing my way through the snow soon had me sweating. Every breath seared my lungs, and my forehead ached like someone had punched it.
But it was still an alien world, with three suns burning bright in the garish pink sky. I pointed this out to Molly, but she just grunted, unimpressed, and hugged herself tightly, as though to keep any warmth from leaking out. I waved cheerfully at Tony in the cab, and he waved back, but showed no sign of wanting to leave his beloved engine.
I trudged through the snow towards the dead bodies. They were everywhere, hundreds of them, lying sprawled in awkward poses in the blood-soaked snow. Some were missing limbs, some were missing heads. Some had been gutted, hacked open. But up close, it soon became clear that my earlier identification had been wrong. These weren’t men in futuristic armour; their armour was a part of them. These people were some kind of cyborg. Man/machine composites. Steel cables and jagged pieces of technology projected from dead white flesh. Cameras in eye sockets, guns built right into the hand. No two of the bodies were exactly the same, but they were all clearly the result of the same process. They looked ugly as sin. Whoever had put them together had valued function over aesthetic. The faces seemed human enough, and the blood was all too familiar.
“Nasty injuries,” said Molly, lurching to a halt beside me. She leaned over one body for a better look, careful not to touch. “But no bullet wounds. These poor bastards have been hacked to pieces. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Mr. Stab had beaten us here.”
“Giles does seem to prefer the sword, believe it or not,” I said. “He was carrying a bloody big one the last time I saw him.”
“They’re using swords in the future?” said Molly incredulously. “When they have the technology to produce cyborgs like these?”
I shrugged. “Who knows what’s normal around here?”
I spotted a discarded gun lying in the snow, and bent down to pick it up. The gun was eerily light in my hand, for all its bulky size. It was mostly a dull green metal, crusted with glowing crystals and blinking coloured readout lights. But it had a barrel, and a trigger, so I aimed it out across the plain and fired. A searing bolt of energy blasted from the gun and blew a massive crater out of the snow a good hundred yards away. The ground shook under our feet for a moment, and Molly grabbed at my arm. All the snow above the crater had been vaporised, leaving thick spirals of mist twisting in the air.
I hefted the energy gun, grinning. “Oh, Uncle Jack is just going to love this.”
“If you can keep from blowing us all up,” Molly said dryly. “Put it away, Eddie. You can play with it later.”
I looked for a safety catch, but the gun didn’t seem to have one, so I just slipped it carefully into my jacket pocket. Molly knelt down beside one of the cyborg bodies.
“Do you think we should take one of these back with us? The Armourer could probably learn all kinds of things from the technology.”
I considered it, but shook my head firmly. “Feels a bit too much like body snatching, I think.”
“Wimp,” said Molly. She started to straighten up, and the cyborg grabbed her suddenly by the arm with one dead hand.
Molly yelled, despite herself. She tugged fiercely, but the cyborg had a death grip on her arm. I stepped quickly forward, and stamped hard on the cyborg’s chest. The armour bruised my heel even through my shoe, but the impact tore the cyborg’s hand away from Molly’s arm. It grabbed for my leg, but I’d already stepped back. Molly backpedalled away from the cyborg as fast as the thick snow would let her, cursing loudly. The cyborg sat up in the bloody snow and looked at us both with a dead, expressionless face. Silvery circuit patterns covered his brow and trailed down one side of his face. He raised one arm and pointed at us, and a thin black barrel slid smoothly out the back of his hand. I threw myself down into the hard-packed snow, and an energy bolt flashed through the air where I’d been standing, close enough that all the hair on my body stood up at once.
I rolled to one side and struggled to my feet. The cyborg rose up out of the snow in swift, jerky movements, already turning his head back and forth, checking for a new target. And yet for all of this, I never once got the feeling that the cyborg was alive. The man was clearly dead, his eyes fixed and unblinking; it was just the built-in machinery that kept him going, probably set off by Molly’s proximity.
I subvocalised the activating Words and armoured up, the silver strange matter flowing all over me in a moment. At once I was insulated from the alien world’s cold, and I felt stronger, faster, sharper. I ran easily through the deep snow, heading straight towards the cyborg. It turned quickly and shot me at point-blank range. The energy beam hit me square in my armoured chest, and ricocheted harmlessly away. I relaxed a little. I’d been pretty sure the armour would protect me, but it was nice to know. I reached out, grabbed the cyborg’s gun arm, and ripped it right out of the socket with one burst of armoured strength. The cyborg rocked on its feet, but didn’t cry out and didn’t fall. It started to raise the other arm, so I tore that one off too. It still didn’t fall, so I grabbed its head with both hands and yanked it clean off.
The eyes stared up at me, unblinking. The mouth moved a few times, and then was still. I looked at the cyborg body. It stood in place, unmoving. I threw the head away.
Molly applauded, the sound flat and small in the empty quiet. “Hardcore, Eddie.”
“He was already dead,” I said. “Or at least, I hope so. Tell you what; let’s give the other bodies plenty of room, okay?”
Molly sniffed loudly, still hugging herself against the cold. “I don’t like this place. Really. My senses are supernaturally attuned to the natural world, to the energies generated by all living things…and I’m not getting anything. I know, I know, this is an alien world, but even so … I ought to be picking up something. I’m telling you, Eddie, there’s not a living thing here. Nothing. And not just here, in this place…you’ve brought us to a dead world, Eddie. These cyborgs, or whoever they were fighting, killed everything on this planet.”